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It takes Luz three days to finally tell them the story of how she died.
(If Amity is being fair, most of the reasoning behind it taking so long for the story to come out is not Luz’s fault: the few hours after Belos fell are a cacophonous blur of elated relief, of celebratory tears and hugs, of joyous reunions and yelling and sparks of magic flying through the air, multihued and wild and free; the next hours after that are dedicated to trekking their exhausted way to the Owl House, and even dilapidated and covered in detritus and graffiti it’s still one of the most beautiful sights Amity’s ever seen, especially once the front door opens and she sees the people she’s come to associate with home, safe and sound and all miraculously whole; the two hours after that are spent arguing over food and over the—inarguable, salient, completely logical but entirely, unanimously vetoed when it was hesitantly brought up—debate that a smaller group sent to the Human Realm for Human food will go and return more quickly than all of them together, because none of them are really keen on being separated for any length of time right now; the next block of time is given to a corner of Luz and Camila’s preferred pizzeria, carefully illusioned and warded against outsiders, tables overflowing with pizzas of every possible topping combination, garlic knots, big bottles of fizzy soda, and the meat that Luz insists are called buffalo wings even though Amity has seen pictures of buffalo and there’s no way that a) buffalo have wings or that b) their wings would be that small; the remainder of the next twenty-seven hours is given to their return to the Demon Realm, dragging piles of pillows and blankets and mattresses together into the biggest fort Amity’s ever been a part of creating, hands clasped and limbs tangled, all nodding off one by one into the deep sleep of the truly depleted, knowing that the monster they’ve been fighting has been, finally, vanquished.
Amity doesn’t like being fair most days, but that’s a character trait she’s been working on. Plus, when it comes to her girlfriend… understanding comes more easily, when it’s Luz.)
They’re all cuddled together on the floor of Eda’s den room, nibbling on three-day-old pizza crusts and taking turns updating each other on the things that others might have missed during the whirlwind of the last—Titan, it’s only been a few days, but to Amity it feels like months.
“So then,” Luz is saying through a yawn big enough to show off her molars, and Willow and Gus are immediately besieged by sympathy yawns, “we take off to the Knee, and I showed the Collector the ice glyph, and we talked about what friendship is made of, and then there was this sort of—rumbling noise, and—”
Luz falters, and Eda reaches out to rub a comforting rhythm across her back. Luz leans back into the contact, eyes closing briefly. She looks… tired, Amity thinks.
They all look so tired, even after more than a full day of uninterrupted sleep.
“That was when Belos made contact with the Titan’s heart,” Raine speaks up, their mouth twisted self-deprecatingly. King snuffs from his perch on Raine’s lap and Raine lets the expression fall, twining their fingers in the scruff at King’s neck in thanks.
“And the Collector—” Luz laughs, but the sound warbles, and Amity watches with something like alarm as tears gather in the corners of her eyes. Gus wordlessly tosses her a box of tissues (the fourth box they’ve gone through, since starting this horror-filled storytime), and she pulls one out immediately, unselfconsciously blowing into it—loud, obnoxious, and yet somehow still utterly charming.
“I tried to stop Belos,” the Collector pipes up from the corner. Half the room flinches at the sound of his voice, months of conditioning not undone by the last three days and a startling change of heart; the Collector seems not to notice, legs tucked up under their chin with one arm wrapped tightly around them, the other hand idly tracing invisible patterns on the floor. “But I wanted to be like Luz, I wanted to be—to be kind, and forgiving, like she was with me.” He frowns, and his voice sounds small when he says, “It didn’t work.”
It occurs to Amity, perhaps somewhat belatedly, how young the Collector looks, scrubbing a sleeve across his nose petulantly, trying to act like tears aren’t dripping from his eyes.
Camila makes a soft noise, moving over to place a gentle hand on their shoulder. “Pobrecito,” she murmurs soothingly, and despite the current of unease still permeating the air, Amity can’t help the wry look she exchanges with Hunter, Gus, and Willow—they’ve all been on that end of Camila Noceda’s particular brand of sympathetic mothering, and she knows that, no matter what horrors he’s put the rest of them through, the Collector is now under Camila’s protection.
The Collector stares up at Camila as she shh-shh-shhes them, literal stars in their eyes, and Amity can’t help but relate. It’s a heady thing, to be loved so wholly and completely by a parent figure. Amity still isn’t used to it.
“It wasn’t your fault, squirt,” Eda says—and that, Amity thinks, is surprising; usually, Eda’s low, raspy nurturing voice only comes out for the select few she deems her kids or kid-adjacent. “Some people are beyond any sort of help, and Belos was the worst kind of ‘people’ there was. But that’s not a reflection on you.”
The Collector sniffles once, twice more, then nods decisively, leaning more fully into Camila’s embrace. “Belos was a meanie head,” he mutters with a huff.
“The meaniest head there ever was,” Eda agrees solemnly, and Luz cackles weakly.
“He sure was. He tried blasting away the Collector, and I stopped him—”
“You stopped him?” Hunter bursts out, incredulous. “How?”
“Well.” Luz draws up short.
Amity suddenly needs to know the answer to Hunter’s question more than anything, because whatever it is, it’s making Luz tense up like a single touch will shatter her, it’s making her lean away from Amity like she can’t bear the contact, it’s making her smile the fakest smile she’s ever seen, eyebrows pinched and lips twisted and eyes so heartbreakingly sad—
“Okay,” Luz says, hoarse. She coughs, then clears her throat, and then, when Amity—and everyone else, probably—is seconds away from snapping, says, “Okay, the important thing here is that I’m fine. I’m fine, and everything’s fine.”
Amity, well-versed in Luz-speak by now, knows that that just means that there was a point where everything, where Luz, was not fine, and is in no way placated.
“Mija,” Camila says, and her voice is so quiet but so full, full of love and helplessness and pain and Amity suddenly understands Luz, understands why she was so—so broken, after seeing her in the Human Realm that first time, when she met Vee, because Camila’s pain hurts Amity, pierces straight into her heart and makes her want to promise anything, anything, if only to take away Camila’s heartbreak. “Luz, what… what happened?”
“I didn’t think.” Luz’s voice is a whisper, but the house is so silent that it still travels. “All I could see was the Collector, trying—trying so hard, to be kind and friendly and—and Belos, he was going to—I had to stop him, I had to,” she says, and her eyes are so big and beautiful and earnest, Amity can hardly look at them, “and Stringbean was—I flew up to them, and I don’t know what spell I cast but I did, and I got between them, I was able to shield the Collector from whatever Belos was trying to do, but—”
She looks down at her hand, flexing her fingers, and the look on her face is so strange, so foreign, and Amity can’t, she doesn’t want to know what comes next anymore, she doesn’t want to know with every fiber of her being, feels untethered, feels like she’s unraveling down to her very core—
Because Amity knows stories, okay? She works (worked?) in a library and has read every single fantasy book she could get her hands on and safely smuggled through the front door of her mother’s house, she’s read The Good Witch Azura so many times she has whole chapters memorized—she knows the Hero’s Journey, she knows what Luz is going to say before she says it, and she can’t stand it, can’t bear to hear it.
She doesn’t realize she’s hyperventilating until there’s a hand pressing, firm but gentle, on the back of her neck, guiding her down, nose between her knees. She gasps, desperate for air, but none seems to make its way into her lungs—there’s a blockage in her throat, fiery hot and swelling with every failed indrawn breath she takes, but she can’t let it out, because she doesn’t know what’ll happen if she lets go, doesn’t know if she’ll ever stop screaming if she starts now, and she can feel it building up, spilling from her eyes and her nose, so fierce she almost chokes—
“Breathe, Amity,” she thinks she hears, distant like it’s being yelled from the back of another far-off Titan. “Listen to me, feel my breaths, breathe with me. Come on, you can do this.”
You’re having a panic attack, informs the voice in her head that has always sounded too much like her mother. Pathetic.
Good Titan, even without the necklace Odalia used to telepathically berate her, she can’t escape.
It’s this frustration, more than anything, that gives her pause, that allows her a split second to catch her breath, to force the air out, then slowly, painfully, drag it in again. There’s a murmur of “In… one… two… Out… one… two… three…” that she does her best to follow, though it takes a few minutes for her breathing to approach anything close to steady.
Slowly, other sensations begin to filter in: a hand, firm and warm, running up and down her back in time with her breaths; smooth, cold porcelain gripped between her own fingers, and the smell of Eda’s second-most potent batch of apple blood wafting up; the prickling feeling on the back of her neck of being watched, which she does her best to ignore; Hooty, cooing in what he probably assumes is a soothing way but is, in fact, vilely grating.
Amity takes a deep breath that hitches three times on the way in, holds it—three, four, five, six, seven—then lets it all out gustily. “Voy a matar a ese maldito pájaro,” she grumbles.
Four choked-off laughs and a quiet, shocked gasp let her know she’d perhaps said that a little louder than she intended, but that doesn’t mean she’s going to take it back. Hooty’s had one foot in the demon pit since two minutes after making Amity’s acquaintance; it’s only a matter of time before she truly snaps on him without anyone around to stop her.
(She knows this is the reason she’s never been left here alone. It’s only her affection for the inhabitants of the house that keeps her from truly trying; as ridiculous as it is and no matter how much they all deny it, Amity knows they’re all perplexingly fond of the vexing house demon.)
Amity inhales once more, and it’s still shaky, but it holds. She opens her eyes.
Miss Lilith smiles at her, gentle and understanding, which answers the question of whose voice was coaching her through breathing exercises. “Better?” she asks kindly.
Hmm. “For a given definition,” Amity rasps. She brings the heavy mug in her hands up to her mouth and takes a bracing sip.
Titan, she’s forgotten how strong apple blood can be.
She only looks up when half her drink is gone, and almost immediately wishes she hadn’t; nearly everyone is so obviously not looking at her that they might as well be staring from six inches away. The only two exceptions are the two Amity expected: Camila watches with worried eyes from where she’s still got an arm around the Collector, smiling in her supportive-without-being-suffocating way, and Luz peers at her from much closer, nose red from the impending threat of tears and wringing her hands together anxiously.
“Amity,” she starts, hesitant, but Amity doesn’t want to hear her ask if she’s okay, not when—
“Tell me it isn’t true,” she all but begs. “Luz…”
“I…” Luz swallows, hard, and Amity tracks the movement. “I can’t.”
It’s exactly what she knew she would hear, but somehow, knowing that doesn’t make it any easier to bear. “Okay,” she says. “Okay.”
It feels like a lie on her tongue. She doesn’t know how she’ll ever be okay again.
She drains the rest of her apple blood in two decisive swallows, then sets the mug blindly down by her feet and reaches out for the box of tissues still in Luz’s lap. She snatches a handful of them, wiping at her runny eyes and nose with the least amount of finesse she’s ever managed, and shudders to think about the mess her definitely-smudged eyeliner has made of her face.
“Okay,” she says for the third time, and if she scooches even closer to her girlfriend, it’s no one’s business but hers and Luz’s. “Just… keep going.”
“Right.” Luz smiles at her, but it’s strained, and she drops it after barely a second. “So—I shielded the Collector from Belos, right, and my shield was awesome, it was big and purple and powerful—except I got it up a second”—she holds up her pointer and thumb to emphasize, hardly space for a strand of hair between them—“too late, and before I knew it, Belos got me with his… actually,” she interrupts herself, wrinkling her nose, “I don’t know what it was, and I’m not sure I want to know, it felt gross. But anyway, it barely got my hand but it didn’t take long to spread, and then I, well—”
King whines then, high and distressed, breaking off the words Amity has been dreading, and buries his head even further into Raine’s lap. Luz turns to him immediately, blanketing his small form without a thought, cuddling in close, stroking soft hands over his horns and back and neck, murmuring comfort to him, inaudible to everyone else except Raine, who gazes down at the commotion in their lap with heartbreak in every inch of their face.
Eda leans on them after a long moment, reaching over her kids. “C’mon, Bossy Boots, cough ’em up,” she says, gruff but not unkind, gesturing at the box of tissues. Now that Amity’s looking, Eda seems just as rattled as King, eyes red-rimmed and overflowing. Of course, Amity thinks, they were both there with her. “Just don’t throw them, I’m not as coordinated as I used to be.” She waves her stunted right arm pointedly.
Amity rolls her eyes but passes the tissues over, and just like that, the tension breaks—it hasn’t entirely dissipated, but there’s room in the air for everyone to breathe, now. She sends a grateful look to Eda, who responds by winking and blowing her nose even more obnoxiously than Luz.
Luz emerges from embracing King after what feels like both an eternity and no time at all, and she drags her unresisting little brother with her from Raine’s hold, settling him in her own lap and curling a protective arm around him.
“And then it was dark,” she says quietly. “Darker than anything I’ve ever experienced before. And… I couldn’t feel… anything.”
Rather hysterically, Amity has the sudden realization that she’s listening to her girlfriend recount how she died and has to press a hand to her mouth to keep from screaming as a fresh wave of tears blurs her vision. She swipes at them impatiently, unwilling to let more than a second go by without Luz in her sight.
“It…” Luz murmurs, gaze askance but eyes fever-bright in the dimming light, “it was—”
Cold, Amity imagines, shivering. The cool embrace of eternity, to which all walk alone.
To which Luz walked alone.
Amity’s fingers twitch with sudden desire—the need to feel her, here, alive and well; alive and with them, with her. Her palm ghosts over Eda’s well-worn, feather-strewn blankets to entwine itself with her girlfriend’s, and Luz reciprocates tightly without looking her way.
Across the circle, their friends are quiet but attentive; they wait for Luz to continue, shuffling closer with unspoken understanding. Beside her, Gus wiggles until he’s practically in her lap; Hunter tucks his chin in his hand but sits stock-still, ever the guard; Willow’s arms encircle them, as if she can shield them with nothing but herself.
The words are a long time coming. Then:
“It was—warm.” Luz blinks at them, slow, as if coming out of a stupor. She shakes her head briskly, and some of the shadows seem to leave her eyes with the motion. “Bright, kind of? There were so many—lights, and colors, and there was this—this water, and you’d sink through it to the other side, but—but, I didn’t.”
Silence greets her halting statement, and Luz finally glances up, frowning uncertainly at the quietude. “It’s not—” she begins in an attempt at reassurance, but the complicated emotions on her friends’ faces give her pause. “It wasn’t scary. And I wasn’t alone.”
“You—” Gus touches her arm. His voice comes out soft—gentle and frayed and gossamer-thin, like spidersilk. “What… what do you mean, Luz?”
“I mean what I said,” she insists, though not unkindly. She’s never unkind, Amity thinks; only righteous, only just, only good. “I wasn’t alone. The Titan—” She smiles faintly as Amity squeezes her fingers. “The Titan was with me.”
The… Titan? Amity looks around, meeting the others’ bewildered expressions with her own.
Oh, Titan.
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She tells a tale as unbelievable as it is undoubtedly truthful: a world of light and shadow, with mirrors to other realms, with pools of water that drag one from this life to the next.
Amity’s heard tell of the afterlife—witches are hardly immune to death, after all—but it’s always been abstract, a distant, long-term possibility. It’s never intruded on her everyday, and certainly has never impacted her personally—present situation notwithstanding, apparently. Besides the fact that teenagers think themselves immortal, well… in a realm like theirs, sometimes they are.
But what Luz speaks of—a golden place of glyphs and darkness, an endless pool where the dead trod, only to sink to the after—is all new.
And then, she describes the Titan. The Titan. The land upon which they live. King’s dad.
And Luz… met him. Talked to him. And… Amity can’t even fathom the rest. Can barely fathom this.
He was beside her one moment, she says, not much taller than Eda and bedecked in bespoke pajamas, and then he wasn’t. Luz hadn’t felt her mortal brain rewire itself to understand what she was looking at, but rewire itself it had, as the kindly Titan before her was replaced by a great skeleton—the foundation of the Boiling Isles himself.
His wings stretched wide, she says, his skull tapered into not two but four curving horns, a quad of moons against the gunmetal sky. His arm rested on his knee, as if genuflecting, before his form inevitably began to sink.
“I wish he didn’t have to go.” Luz’s eyes—illuminated by the still beating heart of a long-dead god—swell with a thick film of tears. Her free hand brushes King’s head, pets his horn, smooths against the little crack along the ridge of his eye. “I wish he could’ve stayed and—and met you, King.”
King remains silent, although he nuzzles into the touch, his horns gently prodding the underside of her forearm. I know, Amity imagines him saying, his voice small and fragile and so, so young. I know.
“I wish…” Luz says again, but it’s a hollow prayer, a desperate whisper, no more than sentiment; world of magic or not, stars never saved anything. They’re just stars—and even the prettiest of them can’t bring back the dead.
King takes her hand from his skull, tugging it instead towards his chest. Luz gives it freely, wrapping her fingers in his fluffy, knotted fur, and swallows hard enough that Amity winces in sympathy.
“So,” she continues, slow. Steady.
So, Amity thinks, tightening her grasp. Her fingers are shaking—or maybe that’s Luz. Maybe it’s both.
The Titan bowed his many-tusked head to the only human witch of the Demon Realm: the guardian of his child, the unknowing student of his discipline—and, now, the lone recipient of his power. And he bid her goodbye.
“I’m alive thanks to him,” Luz admits around something like a hiccup, something that’s almost a sob. “Because of him.”
“Oh, Luz,” Amity breathes, and tugs her—and King—toward her, unable to go a second longer without having her in her arms. Luz topples into her, unresisting, and Amity buries her face into Luz’s hair, squeezing as tight as she dares, heedless of the way one of King’s horns is nearly goring her inner elbow.
Her movement is a signal to the rest of them: in the blink of an eye, they’re surrounded by flailing limbs, voices crowding around them as everyone does their absolute best to smother the three of them in a pile of exhausted witches, demons, one Human mother, an immortal being, and entirely too many mouthfuls of errant hair. Amity’s got an elbow in her gut, and her left leg is going numb from the pressure, and King is squealing directly in her ear—but she wouldn’t trade this, not any of it, for the world.
Underneath them all, Luz laughs and laughs and laughs. It’s the most beautiful sound Amity’s ever heard.
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